With a recent U.S. intelligence report concluding that Iran has likely halted its nuclear weapons program, the Democratic candidates wasted little time before attacking the Bush administration over its handling of the Iranian nuclear issue — and decrying the president’s response to the report. The L.A. Times reports on what the candidates said on the…
American Jewish groups are scrambling to reformulate their message on Iran following the release this week of a new American intelligence report that states with “high confidence” that Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program four years ago. In a conference call Tuesday hurriedly arranged by the umbrella body of Jewish organizations, communal leaders decided to…
As a former first lady aiming to become America’s first female president, Hillary Clinton has a biography heavy with male influences, including Hugh Rodham, the stern father who raised her as a Republican; Don Jones, the Methodist youth minister who introduced her to the civil rights movement, and former president Bill Clinton, her political and…
There are many factors pointing to Dubai’s emergence as a new Middle Eastern economic hub, but one particularly revealing item is the number of foreign visitors patronizing the city’s hotels. Since 2001, the number of Americans staying at this Persian Gulf port city’s hotels has nearly quadrupled, while Iranian visitors have doubled and Sudanese travelers…
Next week, at New York’s Indian consulate, a group of Indian Jews will attempt to bridge the gap between their culture and that of most American Jews — by throwing a Hanukkah party. The decision may seem obvious, but Hanukkah is actually a relatively new addition to the Indian Jewish tradition, which developed separately from…
Officials at the University of Kentucky are trying to dispel a myth circulating on the Internet that it has canceled its Holocaust-related classes due to pressure from Muslim students. Last April, the online rumor-mill began churning when someone mistook the letters “UK,” signifying the United Kingdom, for the University of Kentucky and amended a chain…
In a bid to reassert itself in a region where it long held sway, Russia has re-entered the Middle East diplomatic fray by serving as a go-between for Israel and Syria and by offering to host a follow-up meeting to last week’s peace summit in Annapolis, Md. In the run-up to the summit, to which…
In Portland, Maine, even the editor of the local Jewish newspaper was born to intermarried parents, and when she got around to marrying, it was not to a Jew. Given her own experience, Elizabeth Margolis-Pineo, editor of The Voice, the local Jewish newspaper, was not surprised by a new demographic study that found Portland and…
New Home for Singer Less than a year after he was ousted from the World Jewish Congress under a cloud of suspicion and following an acrimonious dispute with some of its leaders, Israel Singer found a new home with the American Jewish Congress. By becoming the new chair of the international policy council of the…
Victor Erlich, a path-breaking scholar of Russian literature, died November 29. He was 93. Erlich was born in Petrograd, Russia, in 1914, the scion of a scholarly Jewish family. His maternal grandfather was renowned Jewish historian Simon Dubnov and his father was Henryk Erlich, a leader of the Jewish labor union known as the Bund….
The best Hanukkah presents are books. Even if your iPod-craving child screams in grief as she rips off the gift-wrap, smile serenely in the knowledge that you are a superior parent to the consumerist iPod buyers and your child will get into Yale while theirs has to go to a state school. Seriously, these books…
